The final summer
by Xi-feng
Summary: Natsuhiko and Ban as children, one summer in Germany


_'Cause I love the Miroku, particularly Natsuhiko, but he tends to be lumped in with the other six and ignored :( I read somewhere that both he and Ban were born in Denmark, which seems a little random, but change the location to Germany and it might just work in the canon._

_(The German/Japanese: "Oi! Where've you been, you damned idiot? Hey, why weren't you in class, Ban-kun?")_

I'm kind of imagining that Ban kills Ellis that summer, and straight afterwards the adult Mirokus move their child/ren back to Tokyo, while Ban gets sent to stay with Maria at around the same time.

* * * * * 

"Mensch! Wo warsch Du, Du verdammter Idiot? Ne, nan de jugyou de inakatta no, Ban-kun?"

At eight he's still fluid enough to switch between the Japanese of their school hours and the slangy, wanna-be-tough German they hurl back and forth throughout the remainder of their time together with no noticeable difference in facility. Fluid enough to share his body almost 50/50 with his twin sister, tough enough to put an end to his classmates' stares if Ellis is the one who picked out their clothes that day.

Even so, he outlawed her favourite dress on their last birthday. At eight, he's too old to wear pink frills that end above the knee. He loves his sister as much as any big brother ever has, but he will only go so far down _that _particular road.

Ban squints up from the overlapping screens that obscure his vision – the dark bangs hanging down long enough to tickle his nose, the round purple glasses (Ellis calls it his 'John Lennon look') doing a pretty good job of covering most of the rest of his face – and sticks his tongue out. He has something in his hand.

"Want to see something cool?"

Natsuhiko quirks an eyebrow and grins. "Always." He sits down beside Ban in the flowing shade cast by the big twisted beech. It's the last week before school lets out for the summer, and the park is crowded with kids of all ages dawdling their way home. Across the lily pond at their feet, the cliquey boys in their class whose fathers are all Tokyo and Osaka businessmen on overseas transfer have set up a baseball game, Giants vs. Tigers. Neither Ban nor Natsuhiko have been invited to join them. 

Ban is slightly the shorter of the two, though Natsuhiko is more slender and probably weighs less. There's a measured grace in both the boys' movements, but Ban has a subtle aura of power and poise that Natsuhiko perhaps lacks. He extends his hand in the other boy's direction to show the ceramic jug sitting on his palm. It's only small, but its walls are thick and it looks sturdy. They both stare at it as Ban slowly closes his fingers around it. There's a predatory smirk on his face as his fist tightens, and suddenly there's a sharp _crack_ as the jug shatters.

Natsuhiko laughs, genuinely impressed. "Hey, that _is _cool. Just like an anime character with superpowers! You should have a name for it you can shout out when you use it, something really cheesy and cliché."

"Snake Bite." Ban's not laughing; he pronounces the English words carefully, but Natsuhiko has to think for a minute before he understands. Actually, Ellis supplies him with the translation and he pretends he understood it to begin with.

"Yeah, whatever. That's okay, I guess."

That twinkle of mischief is back in Ban's eyes. "Go on, then," he says, reaching into his schoolbag and pulling out an identical jug, "_Your_ turn."

It's not like he can back down, not to Ban. Rather reluctantly, Natsuhiko takes the jug in his right hand and covers it with his left, then squeezes. Tsubaki and Tokisada are watching with a younger sibling's undying faith – there's no way their Natsuhiko-oniisan can fail at this. He grits his teeth and squeezes harder, till the joints in his fingers creak. Kirara and Ukyou are yelling something about some puppy they've seen (though Ukyou's exclamations consist primarily of _Kill it! Kill it!_), and he feels Ellis smile knowingly. He ignores them all. Sweat springs out on his brow.

"Just give up already, 'Natsu-kun'. My palm force exceeds 200kg, and there's no way you're topping that."

Even if Ban's right – and he knows he is – it's still annoying to hear that smug ring in his voice. Natsuhiko forces a laugh and throws the jug away from him, out onto the grass. It rolls a short way across the flat surface and drops into the pond with a sploosh, where it floats, bobbing up and down. At least Hikage was asleep throughout this, so he didn't fail in front of _all _his siblings.

"Stupid game anyway."

"Only 'cause you lost."

"You liar. I didn't lose."

"Oh yeah? Oh yeah? What d'you call that, then? What does our Elliechen say?" Ban waves his fingers in Natsuhiko's face, "Ellis! Your brother just lost miserably, didn't he? Tell him!"

_/that *was* a pretty pathetic show/, _Ellis says.

_/shut up/, _he replies, /_whose side are you on, anyway?/ _"She's asleep. She didn't see."

Ban snorts. "Liar," he and Ellis say simultaneously.

"Whatever, Ban. Go home: I'm sure your grandmother needs some help sucking those eggs you gave her." He leans forward slightly and presses his knuckles to his right temple, slitting his eyes as he watches the progress of the baseball game.

Ban watches sidelong. "Headache?" With his new Jagan making him almost cross-eyed at times, he can commiserate.

"Mmm. It's the newbie." Actually, the pain isn't as bad this time as the last few have been. When Kirara's personality split off – when she was 'born', she began showing her headstrong nature almost at once, fighting for control of the body at only three months old. And Ukyou was a nightmare: none of the siblings had gotten much sleep until he was well into his terrible twos, when he raged so hard during the day that he usually fell asleep, exhausted to the point of unconsciousness, by mid-afternoon. This new little brother seems to be turning out more peacefully than the rest, but it doesn't change the fact that eight people are now sharing the same amount of mental space that had housed seven of them before, and it grates on the nerves.

They sit in silence for a while as the sun begins to dip down towards the horizon, streaking the clouds in colour and washing warm hints into the grey city jumble that surrounds the green swathe of the park. The baseball game gradually winds to a close and the boys scatter in twos and threes, some of the little groups coming close enough to the beech to yell insults at the pair. Ban catcalls a few homemade taunts after them, though Natsuhiko ignores them and stretches out on his stomach, resting his chin on his forearms.

Ban knows what's wrong: he's been thinking about it too.

"You still going back to Japan at the end of the summer?"

"Uhn. They're moving the Aztec Star from Berlin to some collector in Tokyo, so my father has to go with it, and he wants us to stay there permanently. We have to go to some stupid samurai-style traditional school and carry on the family discipline" He buries his face in his arms. "Don't want to be a Mamoriya when I grow up."

"Yeah, sucks to be you." Ban's tone is not an unkind one, and he rests a hand briefly on Natsuhiko's shoulder before punching him lightly in the head. Even at seven years old, it is about the closest he can come to expressing sympathy.

"Ow!" Natsuhiko sits up and punches back, not so lightly. Before long they're rolling around, wrestling on the grass and laughing. Of course, it's no effort for Ban to get his weaker friend spread-eagled facedown on the ground, all four limbs pinioned and immoveable no matter how loud Natsuhiko yells to let him up. 

"And so end all those who dare take on the invincible Midou Ban-sama!" Ban declares, freeing an arm to flick the back of the dark head, when the body under him undergoes a subtle change – a slight tremor he can only feel because of their contact, then is normal again, though the dimensions are slightly altered, the body filling the space it occupies in a slightly different way.

"Ban, get _up! _You're _hurting_ me!" Ellis demands, turning her head as far as she can and managing to fix him with a fierce glare from her one visible eye. "Get up _right now _or I'm telling your grandmother about those magazines you've got hidden under your bed! The ones you were showing Natsuhiko the other week! I _mean_ it!"

"Ach, you're no fun, Ellie." Ban relents and rocks back onto the balls of his feet, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. Ellis sits up and smoothes down her hair, then fixes the boy at her side with a calculating stare. She leaps at him, fast as an electric eel, and

    and Natsuhiko's weight pummels into Ban, the momentum knocking the slightly smaller boy to the grass again. "Miroku Tag-team attack!" he crows victoriously, then quickly, before Ban can retaliate, he makes use of his slightly longer reach to snag the unshattered jug out of the pond and dunk its contents over the dark head underneath him. "That's for hurting my sister, Midou," he says, only half-joking, as Ban gives an outraged roar and pushes him off. Ban scrambles to his feet, glaring through sodden bangs. Great. His grandmother is going to _kill _him. "Well I was meaning to hurt *_you*_, so go dunk your own damn head."

Natsuhiko just throws back his head and laughs, partly because Ban looks so funny and undignified, partly for the sheer joy of getting one over on him for once, and partly for the summer that is to come. As they wander over the cropped green of the park (with plenty more sidetracking for impromptu wrestling and races between various landmarks), the warm air bringing the smells of crushed flowers and open dumpsters floating faintly on a light breeze, that's all that really seems to matter. Forget school, forget family, forget Tokyo and saying goodbye. It's not important. The sun sinks into the West, and there's Midou Ban-sama and the Miroku siblings, and the final summer ahead of them.


End file.
